mood, they will confess as much themselves.  And what is more, we can provide our readers with an instance of such a confession.  Many will well remember a well-known and distinguished Anglican divine, named Canon Malcolm MacColl.  He died a few years ago, and we do not wish to say anything against him.  Well, he wrote to The Spectator in 1900.  His letter may be seen in the issue of 22nd December for that year.  In the course of this letter he makes the following admission:  he declares that “to concede that the Church of England starts from the reign of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth is to surrender the whole ground of controversy with Rome.  A Church,” he continues, “which cannot trace its origin beyond the sixteenth century is obviously not the Church which Christ founded.”

The late Anglican Canon MacColl is, of course, perfectly right, and his inference is strictly logical.  A Church, however highly respectable and however richly endowed, which came into existence only 1,500 years after Christ, came into existence just 1,500 years too late, and cannot by any intellectual manoeuvring or stretching of the imagination be identified with the one Church established by Christ 1,500 years earlier.  Consequently every member of the Anglican community finds himself, nolens volens, impaled on the horns of a truly frightful dilemma.  For either he must frankly confess that his Church is not the Church of God, i.e., not the True Church, which (human nature being what it is) he can hardly be expected to do; or else he must assert that it goes back without any real break to the time of the Apostles; which though absolutely untrue, is the only other alternative.  In a word, he finds himself in a very tight corner.  He knows, unless he is able to persuade himself of the truth of continuity, the very ground of his faith must slip from under his feet, and that he must give up pretending to be a member of Christ’s mystical body altogether.

No wonder there is consternation in the Anglican camp.  No wonder that sermons are preached, and history is re-edited and facts suppressed, and pamphlets are circulated to prove that black is white and that bitterness is sweet, and that false is true.  No wonder there are shows and pageants and other attempts to prove the thing that is not.  Poor deluded mortals!  It is really pitiable to witness such straining and such pulling at the cords; as though truth—­solid, imperturbable, eternal truth—­could ever be dislodged or forced out of existence!  No!  They may disguise the truth for a time, they may hide it for a brief period; just as a child, with a box of matches and a handful of straw, may, for awhile, hide the eternal stars.  But as the stars are still there, and will appear again when the smoke has blown away, so will the truth reappear and assert itself, when men grow calm, and put aside pride and passion and prejudice and self-interest.  “Magna est veritas, et prevalebit!”